Gina Broom says, “Site owners across the globe blow their noses noisily as they discover the obituary here. And then they don their black clothes and head out. The year is 2014, and this is the funeral of Google Authorship. Many put time and effort making sure that rel=”author” was laced throughout their website. Each content page frosted with the name and picture of whoever had compiled all of those words into a coherent, informative blog post. But in the words of the (once) famous boy band Five”. Google Authorship is Dead: What’s Missing and How to Fix It Mark Ling’s  ’Affilorama’... [...]

Graham Charlton says, “Panda 4.1, as it has been dubbed, was released by Google last week with the aim of identifying low quality content more easily.  According to Google, it affects between 3% and 5% of search queries and will result ‘in a greater diversity of high-quality small- and medium-sized sites ranking higher’. I asked Marcus Tober, CTO and co-founder of SearchMetrics, about the new update”. Panda 4.1: what’s it all about? ‘Econsultancy’ Blog  [...]

Amy Gesenhues says, “Last night, Google announced a new Panda Update that helps the search engine identify websites with low-quality content. According to Googler Pierre Far, this recent update, which started rolling out earlier this week and is expected to be complete by next week, will affect three to five percent of queries depending on their locale. Designed to help Google identify thin content “more precisely,” the update will penalize sites with low quality content, while allowing sites with more high-quality content to rank better”. Google Rolling Out New Panda Update Designed... [...]

Graham Charlton says, “Google yesterday announced the introduction of ‘structured snippets’, which shows extra data around search results.  According to the Google Research blog, this extracts tabular data from web pages to provide more detail around listings”. Google introduces ‘structured snippets’ into search results ‘Econsultancy’ Blog  [...]

Pamella Neely says, “You don’t need rel=author tags on your site anymore. Google no longer tracks data from them. All authorship results in Google search are gone, too. And don’t look for Authorship functionality in your Google Plus profile, either — it’s been removed. Google has ended Google Authorship. There were signs of this coming If you feel betrayed, it’s okay. Many search=marketing professionals feel the same way. But after a few moments to process the grief, you’ll probably remember we did have signs of this coming”. Farewell Google Authorship, We Hardly Knew You Web... [...]

Rand Fishkin says, “Google is drawing connections between semantic concepts and brand names, and it’s affecting SERPs. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains that process, offering tips on how we can help make sure our own brands are included”. How Google is Connecting Keyword Relevance to Websites through More than Just Domain Names – Whiteboard Friday MOZ Blog  [...]

James McCormick says, “You’ve heard us saying a thousand times: the buzz about big data isn’t about the amount of data you’ve collected; it’s how you digest that data and turn it into actionable insights. With the revamp to Google Analytics’ (GAs) benchmarking, Google is taking the next steps in allowing us common folk to process data in a platform with a simple UI, built to enable you to draw insights to catalyze actionable improvements to your marketing program. Google’s vision is there. GAs extended benchmarking capability  – available to free and premium users –... [...]

Jom Seward says, “I love Screaming Frog. It is without doubt the best SEO tool I use on a daily basis (no offense, Moz). The sheer amount of data you can get about your website, or someone else’s website, is incredible. You can find broken links, you can check for your Google Analytics (or any other) code on all pages through the custom search, and you can even go so far as to follow all the redirects and find out the redirect paths in a website. In this quick guide, I’m going to show how Screaming Frog data can be used to help perform a content audit. The data in Screaming Frog... [...]

Jason Abbruzzese says, “After four months and more than 3 million comments, the public input period for the Federal Communications Commission’s Internet regulations is coming to a close. The sheer numbers could be lauded as a victory for democracy in which the Internet came together to save itself, with studies showing overwhelming support for net neutrality. But the Internet does not decide on regulation — the FCC’s five commissioners do”. 4 Months and 3 Million Comments Later, the Public Has Spoken on Net Neutrality Mashable  [...]

Apple just announced their new iPhone 6 earlier this week. Samsung announced the Galaxy S5 not long ago. And Amazon also just announced the Amazon Fire Phone‎. Now Google is poised to enter this “battle of the titans”, too. While Google has the technical prowess and the marketing clout to match any of these companies, the question is whether this is the time when they get everything right. Microsoft also had plenty of technical prowess and marketing clout, but their first generation of the Microsoft Surface was widely viewed as not up to the standard set by their competitors.... [...]